The Color Black in True Blood

While reading Dead Until Dark or the Sookie Stackhouse Novels, the series is narrated by a telepathic waitress, named Sookie, from Louisiana. The novels follow a variety of themes like sex, religion, and race, but the characters within the novel are predominately Caucasian. Aside from the novels, the HBO series True Blood (2008 - 2014) bases itself on similar themes and plot in the first season. One notable and very influential difference from the novels to the show are the main characters Tara Thornton and Lafayette Reynolds. While the novel details a strong discrimination between humans and vampires, the show creates these major characters to not only highlight this racism and discrimination, but to give it a more realistic perspective. The characters also give a voice to the discriminated, adding to the perspective of the oppressed.

First, let’s look at Tara, who is Sookie’s best friend in the show and does not appear in the novels. Being a woman of color in Louisiana, which is not your typical progressive area, she does not follow the stereotypical black person. Shes uses her color to help define herself and also uses her intelligence to feel more superior toward her white characters. Putting Tara in the show really helps it dive into their metaphorical racism between humans and vampires. Without Tara True Blood would not have a foundation for its racism and discrimination to stand on. Ultimately, having Tara as a person of color shows how bigotry affects real people, instead of just using straight metaphors.

Since Bon Temps, where the show mainly takes place, is a very white, conservative area, Tara and Lafayette act as the “others” based on their skin color. While at some points in the show where Tara focuses her aggression on slavery and oppression in her hometown, her vibrant personality and past make her a more complex character. Aside from Tara’s complex character development in the show, she is complimented by her gay cousin, Lafayette. In the show, viewers might assume that Lafayette does not care too much for Sookie’s relationship with Bill. This is not because he himself makes a deal with a vampire to exchange sex for vampire blood, but because he understand what it’s like to be ridiculed for relationships outside the societal norm. While Lafayette and Tara provide various comical scenes throughout the series, both characters are given issues that metaphorically coincide with our culture. Tara serves for the purpose of confronting racism and the trauma of abuse and it’s victims. Whereas with Lafayette, how the show uses the vampires to talk about racism, it also uses vampire human relationships to talk about homophobia. Both characters are invisible or non-existent in the books, but in the show they alone put cultural issues in a more practical context.

930 Words on Tara and Lafayette

"True Blood" has become old news in the TV world. The HBO series was popular with the younger generations and became a household name from 2008 to 2014, but may be fading into obscurity now. The show, as some people know, is based off the "Sookie Stackhouse" series. The first season follows the books rather well and only strays away to add in another character (because it was very odd that Sookie didn’t have any good friends other than Bill Compton). It only removes part of the plot because it draws too much attention away from Bill and Sookie’s romance (even though it would offer quite an interesting discussion or characterization). In my limited experience watching the series (I’m on Episode 8 right now), there have been quite a few characters that have irked me.

One of the characters they added is named Tara Thornton. Tara is the epitome of the “sassy black friend,” except her type of sass is just "bitchy" and she has quite a chip on her shoulder with the rest of the world. The chip comes from her mother, an alcoholic and a druggie who spends her time verbally abusing Tara and saying she’s doing all of this in the name of God. Tara’s purpose is to give Sookie someone to talk to about her "undead bae" and probably included to add a more diverse character pool to the series.

One of the original characters is named Lafayette, a black man; however, he has a stark difference from Tara. Lafayette is a good ol’ Southern queen. He wears eyeshadow and fake eyelashes, has more of a swish in his walk than most women, and tries to seduce “the straightest man at a party.” 
Lafayette is, again, the epitome of a gay man from the South. Not only that, but he sells all kinds of illegal substances and even dabbles in prostitution. Not only are they caricatures of themselves, but the two are related.

There are really few uses that I can think of for either in their original contexts. Tara seems to exist only as Sookie’s best friend who has fallen madly in love with her older brother. The only other possible reasoning behind creating her would be that she is a voice of reason -- Sookie’s smarter half. But we already have one of those: Sam is reasonable and we often see him trying to talk Sookie out of things that are just plain mad. And Lafayette is portrayed accurately in the television series when compared to the novel. Of course he would need a more detailed background story, as he isn’t mentioned much in the book -- but why does his background story have to include him dealing drugs? Yes, doing this brings us closer to Jason, shows us just how powerful V (vampire blood) really can be, and provides us with comic relief.

But why are they stereotypes and caricatures? I find it odd -- and rather offensive -- that the two African-American characters aren’t normal people, but rather overdramatized versions of what they could be. The show -- and books -- seem to have these characters to add diversity. Really, that is one of the only reasons I can imagine for this. The main cast remains predominately white for all seven seasons, and in all the main cast pictures, Lafayette and Tara are the only two shown that are not white. And later, Tara “comes out of the closet” as a lesbian, making her and Lafayette two of the homosexual characters as well. And in a series where quite a few plot lines involving sexuality seem to be cut out, why add this one?

The series has tried to correct wrongs in the book; it wants to expand the characters to be more diverse both sexually and racially, but it handled both of these the wrong way. Not only has it made the three African-American characters (including Tara’s alcoholic mother) stereotypes, two of those three characters were also homosexual. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with characters of various sexualities and races - in fact, there’s everything rightwith such a thing - but what isn’t right is that the writers thought it would be a good idea to clump everything together. It’s not accurate and doesn’t paint a great picture of the African-American community in any region -- especially small-town Louisiana.

The "Sookie Stackhouse" novels definitely have their faults -- as does "True Blood" the series. One of the biggest is how it has portrayed its more diverse characters. Rather than try to handle race, it has just thrust three characters into generally bad stereotypes and given two of them the majority of the diversity in the show. In trying to fix the problems that the book had, the show has instead magnified them and made them worse.